Curriculum Vitae
Michel Roth was born in 1976 in Altdorf (Uri) and lives in Lucerne. He studied composition and music theory at the Basel Academy of Music with Roland Moser. After receiving his diploma with distinction, two more years of study followed with Detlev Müller-Siemens. In 2001 he was appointed to the Lucerne University of Music, where he served as professor of composition and music theory and directed the Studio for Contemporary Music. In this capacity he worked with Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, Péter Eötvös and Sofia Gubaidulina and established the Contemporary Art Performance program in cooperation with the Lucerne Festival Academy. In 2011 he followed an appointment as Professor of Composition, Music Theory and Music Research at the Basel Academy of Music, where he is also a member of the research department. In 2022 he completed his doctorate on musical indetermination and game theory at the University of Basel (summa cum laude).
As a composer, Michel Roth has worked with many renowned performers, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Klangforum Wien, the Stuttgarter Vocalsolisten and the Jack Quartet. He has been a guest at numerous international festivals, such as the Lucerne Festival, Musica Viva (Munich), the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, the Warsaw Autumn and as a "visiting composer" at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. Michel Roth has received numerous prizes and grants, including the BMW Composition Prize of Musica Viva Munich for his orchestral piece Der Spaziergang. His first opera Im Bau was staged by Georges Delnon at Theater Basel in 2011 and later appeared as a radio play version and interactive website (www.imbauprojekt.ch). The operetta Die Künstliche Mutter was created in 2016 as a co-production of Lucerne Festival and Gare du Nord Basel (supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation). A wide range of his works is published by Ricordi.
In addition, Michel Roth researches and publishes on musicological and music-practical topics and was music curator of the four interdisciplinary exhibition projects Harmony and Dissonance (2006), "Neo-Impressionism and Modernism" (2008), LINEA (2011) and Dieter Roth and Music (2014) at Kunsthaus Zug and Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin. Many of his more recent works have a game-theoretical background, especially pod (2017), SPIEL HÖLLE (2021) and RAMANUJAN FEVER DREAM (2022). Based on his studies of the group Selten gehörte Musik (2012-2014; www.dieterrothmusic.ch), he developed a game-theoretical description of musical indetermination, which on the one hand is analytically applicable to aesthetic processes, and on the other hand generatively opens up new possibilities of contemporary composing. To this end, in 2023 he curated the international festival SPIEL! Games as Critical Practice at the Basel Academy of Music and Theater Basel.
He is also considered the discoverer of the natural vibrations of alpine cable car ropes, which he has been documenting since 2020 in his own blog and sound archive (https://ropesinging.ch/) and for which he has developed a special recording technology (www.seilsender.ch).